Monday, 21 May 2012

I have wanted this book ever since I first saw a review of it. And now I have a copy I can tell you that I was definitely not disappointed with it. Just take a look at the first paragraph.

'Late one autumn afternoon Tilly Ipswitch, Queen of Halloween, came flying home on her broomstick, carrying a book called What Every Space Traveller Ought to Know. She had bought it at the planetarium, where she had been studying the stars.'

Brilliant!

And the illustrations are wonderful too. I love the characterisation of Tilly. She is just the right amount of witchy and scary and appealing.

The story follows Tilly Ipswitch who is of course a witch as she builds a contraption called the zoom broom and flies it into space. She is on the hunt for creatures to scare on Halloween. As you might expect, not everything quite goes to plan and Tilly Ipswitch ends up being the one who is scared.

What I like most about this book, apart from the illustrations are all the imaginative little details scattered around. For example, the mold for the zoom broom is made from a hollowed out dinosaur tooth. The zoom Broom is powered by jet-black magic.

Another detail I really liked was that Kit the cat is only willing to go into space in the zoom broom because he thinks that the milky way is going to be full of milk for him to drink. Of course it isn't and there is a lovely little sentence that says:

'But not a single drop of milk did they see in all that field of twinkling stars.'

I don't know how popular this book is. I certainly had never heard of it in England before but maybe it is more well known in America? I'd be interested to know! (It's by Don Freeman, the same author who wrote 'Corderoy.') Either way I love it!

Thursday, 17 May 2012

I saw this book sitting in the window of Waterstones the other day whilst I was in town and had to go inside and have a proper look at it. And then buy it...

This is such a cute book. I love both the story and the charming, loose illustrations. It's about a tiny little bear (maybe that's why I love it so much, I have always been a sucker for miniature things) who lives inside a book! He is always happiest when children are reading his book.

The great thing is that Otto can climb out of his book and go and have adventures when people aren't looking. But then one day he gets left behind. He has to take his little bag and go and find somewhere else to live.

Of course Otto finds the perfect place to live in the end. Can you guess where?

Monday, 14 May 2012

This weekend Henry, my mum and I went to the south of France for a friends wedding! You know, as you do... Anyway, we went for three days so we also had a bit of time to look around and do a few other things.

These things included: eating loads of cheese and cherries and strawberries and baguette, getting very hot in the sunshine and also very blown about in the wind, seeing the sights of Avignon including the 'Palais de Papes,' sampling probably far too much french food and going up to the mountains and seeing inside the caves.

Henry eying the cheese

delicious strawberries

delicious cheese! (I loooove cheese!)

the mountain/gorges. This photo doesn't do it justice.

standing on the mountain

so yummy!

Inside the caves in the mountains

looking round a church in Graveson

The wedding couple

sugared almonds

wedding cake of macaroons!

Henry and I in our wedding outfits. It was very windy!

It was a very good few days and the actual wedding was spectacular. Also it was so nice to get a bit of sunshine. I want the sun to come back to England!